Animated Atrocities 162/Transcript
Well, here's a review that I never expected that I'd get to do. Today, we're looking at a little-known short called Cans Without Labels. (Cut to a clip from Star Wars) Obi Wan-Kanobi: Now, that's a name I have not heard in a long time. Yeah, same here. It was funded via Kickstarter back in 2012, with a slated release date of February of 2013. It didn't come out until about a week ago, in June. of 2019! More than six years later. Although, if you know anything about John Kricfalusi, this might come off as expected. (Cut to an image of John Kricfalusi) Ah, yes. The man of the hour, John K.--John Kricfalusi. He was the one behind the Kickstarter and this project. While he was not the only one who worked on it, it's clear that he was the one who called all of the shots. The inspiration for this cartoon came from one of his own personal childhood memories. Now, John K. is known for quite a few things, and let's make no mistake. He's a very influential person. Or at least, he used to be. (Over a clip of the ''Ren and Stimpy intro)'' John Kricfalusi created one of the first Nicktoons, Ren and Stimpy. (Caption: "Doug and Rugrats were the other 2.") And of the three, his was the most popular for quite a while. His work, even more so than the other two, helped shape the landscape of the nineties animation, leading to television animation finally becoming interesting and of a consistent high quality. He is a large reason of why the nineties were so... interesting. Not only that, but he and his company, Spumco, created the first webtoon. A lot of people might not know this, but he created The Goddamn George Liquor Program back in 1997, about a full decade before YouTube was even a thing. George Liquor: Hello! I'm George Liquor--American! And even before the current incarnation of Newgrounds. John K. is one of the most influential cartoonists alive; he is also an awful specimen of a human being! There are some of his flaws that I can ignore: his love of gross-out humor, his penitent for getting things done behind schedule, even being stuck up his ass about his "holier-than-thou" opinions. "Kids cannot follow stories. They don't know what the hell is going on in a cartoon. They like to see funny visual things happening." - John K. (Over a screenshot of various characters from various cartoons that aired in the 2010s) I can even ignore him coining the term, "CalArts Style." But there are some things that I can't ignore. He seems to be one to love creating a hostile work environment. If he's not a misogynist, he's incredibly good at acting like one. And of course, right now, he is under some very serious allegations. He's been accused of manipulation, sexual harassment, child pornography, grooming people, and hemophilia. (Cut to the walrus from the ''Ren and Stimpy episode, "Rubber Nipple Salesmen")'' Walrus: Call the police. If you want to learn more about these specific allegations, I will link to a video made by blameitonjorge, who goes further into this than I am willing to go. What we're going to do here is try and talk about this piece of animation here itself. I'm not going to talk about it as if it was in a vacuum; I don't think there's any merit in doing that. But I want to keep this focus of this review on Cans Without Labels, the cartoon short that he made. 3,500 backers pledged around $136,000 to make this thing happen of a $110,000 asking price. And I think that that deserves some kind of compensation. Let me be very, very clear: I do not look down on anyone who funded this back in 2012 and nobody else should, even knowing what we know about John K. now. We didn't know about any of these things back then. Even now, there are plenty of people who are still unaware. And yes, I don't look down on anyone who funded this, even knowing that John K. has a reputation of taking forever on his work. At the time, at least, he seemed to be very passionate about this specific project. He went on many interviews about the memories that sparked this little idea. John K.: The project I'm doing right now is, um... is a cartoon called Cans Without Labels, and it stars George Liquor and two of his nephews, Slab and Ernie. And this is a true story. It's based on a story when I was a kid--so my dad was real cheap, he grew up in the Depression, and he'd never buy anything or full price--full sticker price. And he wouldn't buy brand label stuff. You know, like, uh... He'd never buy Heinz ketchup, it was always, like, you know, uh... Vlond's brand ketchup. It's very easy to thing that, "This time, he'll get it done on time and it'll be amazing! After all, his public reputation is on the line this time around." Ironically enough, it was only when his reputation bottomed out that we'd get to see the end product, and the end product is a piece of poop. Not only that, but one that came out six and a half years late, and my patience for being late for project ends at a Kickstarter campaign of over $100,000. THERE IS NO WAY IN HELL THAT THIS SHOULD HAVE TAKEN THIS LONG! For the sake of argument, let's pretend that this is a masterpiece. It isn't, but let's pretend. (Cut to Jayden Animations' videos) Right now, animation vloggers are all over the place on YouTube. It takes about a month for say, Jayden Animations to make eleven minutes of animation. And the others in that community have a similar time scale. (Cut to ''Cans Without Labels) ''This eleven minutes took six and a half years. But all right, that style of animation is completely different. (Cut to Eddsworld) Eddsworld: Legacy, an Indegogo project, earned $83,000 dollars back at a similar time. It only took them four years to get their project done, and they got five episodes and more shorts done. They created over forty minutes of content, not including the documentaries that they produced. And Eddsworld was complete with the works; coloring, background, voice acting, music, shading--you could put that on TV and it'd fit right in. This, here? Let's talk about this eleven minutes of animation. (Caption: "'Animation'") Actually, that's the first issue with Cans Without Labels, it's not even eleven minutes! Yes, the time of the video is eleven minutes, but the problem here is that a minute at the start is used for credits, and a minute at the end is for backer rewards. So, that brings us down to nine minutes, but even a nine-minute time scale is still an illusion. This cartoon is filled with fluff; it has very long shots of nothing happening. There are plenty of shots of nothing more than a series of stupid faces, and of course, you need to have the requisite... dialogue... that takes... forever! George Liquor: Tell ya what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna go... take a crap. So altogether, I'd have to estimate that there's about five minutes of things actually moving along, which is about less than one minute of animation per year. Well, then again, this was made by a perfectionist, so maybe this is the most perfect thing ever! (laughing) This is the most perfect thing... Yo-yo-you're trollin', right? Just from what I've shown you, you've probably noticed plenty of flaws yourself. First of all, this is in a 4:3 aspect ratio. I don't know why! Yes, nineties cartoons were in a 4:3 aspect ratio, which is why you have the black bars on the sides when you upload them to a place like YouTube, but standards change over time. Everyone--and I mean everyone--uses 16:9 now! That's pretty much the default in most animation programs. It's not just a television standard, it's an internet standard, too--it's an everyone standard! It's not like John K. doesn't know how to animate in 16:9. Hell, the backer rewards are in a 16:9 ratio, which means that this video is always going to have these side bars no matter where it's uploaded. (Cut to scene from ''Cans Without Labels stretched to fit the screen, overlayed with the caption: "Unless you edit it like I just did.")'' Maybe to give him the benefit of the doubt, it's a stylistic choice. You know, an attempt to invoke the aspects of the nineties, but this is absolutely not the way you do it. When you bring back an older decade, you only bring back the good aspects--our positive pieces of it, not things like technical limitations. The people who wanted to see nineties animation like this would absolutely love to see nineties animation in a 16:9 aspect ratio. If you want a direct comparison, look at Cuphead. (Cut to said video game) People love it because it took thirties animation and did with it what we could do today with our technology, and it left behind the unflattering parts of 1930s animation that nobody wants around anymore. Then, there are the facial expressions themselves. George Liquor: EAT THE FUCKING...FACE! I've actually wanted to make a little rant about this for quite a while by now, 'cause this is something that's really been bothering me about Internet animation in general. Tons and tons of Internet animators have come to the conclusion that stupid faces equals jokes, like all the time. When you're watching a parody of Pokemon or Yu-Gi-OH! or whatever, what they'll do is not have jokes--besides needless profanity--they'll just bring up a reference from the show and make this distorted face. I don't bring this up, though and I don't review these because these guys are just hobbyists just doing what they love. They're technically amateurs, but all the power to them if they do this. I recommend that they not do it, but they can if they want to. No one's their boss, they can do whatever they want. So, can you please tell me why an animation veteran who has been doing this for over twenty years is doing what amateurs do? (Clips from ''Ren and Stimpy are shown during the following line)'' Ren and Stimpy was definitely known for its bizarre facial expressions, so I can see where the logic comes from. But let's start with the very, very basic "there were other types of jokes in Ren and Stimpy. Ren bashing his face in with a hammer isn't funny because he's making faces doing it, it's funny because he's bashing his face in with a hammer. The facial expressions enhance the other jokes. Stupid faces is the only type of humor that we get here. The other problem is that the animation of the characters kind of fluctuates way too much. Like, in one frame, it'll be one expression, then in the next frame, it'll be a different expression, even with a different body position all mashed together. We have in-betweens and smears for a reason. It makes me think that the only reason that Ren and Stimpy looked decent is because the limited animation of the time prevented them from filling every single frame with crap! The timing of this short is completely off, so not a single joke lands. (Cut to a clip from ''Double Rainboom) This actually reminds me of another project; that's something that failed to get a laugh out of most people because the jokes...took forever to get to the point because there was too much fluff in it. They had to reach a specific time for a grade because that was made by a college student as a final presentation, and it was made for free in the timespan of a college semester. ''Cans Without Labels is made by a professional who had over $130,000 to work with over six and a half years. Then, there are times when the animation doesn't want to animate. George Liquor: (sliding into frame with his pants down, belt in hand) Ooh, that face better be gone! You saw that, right? What happened was that George Liquor was drawn once and then, that drawing was slid across the room. You know, for someone who hated the animation industry in the seventies and the eighties so much, I'm honestly intrigued that he'd use their techniques verbatim. I'm actually getting a lot of joy when I say this, uh... (Cut to clips from Hanna-Barbera cartoons) ...but Hanna-Barbera animation is better than this John Kricfalusi animation. At least Hanna-Barber had an excuse. They barely broke even with their cartoons and they needed to get animation out fast. Once again, I know I'm reiterating it a lot, but this cost $130,000 and took six years to make. There's a difference between drawing art and animation. (Over a clip from ''The Simpsons) If ''The Simpsons is a show made by writers that can't draw, Cans Without Labels is made by an artist that can't animate. You'll also notice that there's a lot of CGI in this short; I have no idea why. From what I understand, John K. hated CGI and had some choice words to say about it. And if you're funding a John K. production, wouldn't you want the entire thing to be hand-drawn? I mean, the CGI in this short is just used for tables, the cans, and the chairs--it's not much, but it still gives a very weird effect. Like, if you play this side-by-side with The Amazing World of Gumball, you'll see the problem. The drawn characters in Gumball are really integrated into the world around them with things like clever lighting and camerawork. Cans Without Labels shows you exactly what can go wrong. These characters all look like cardboard cutouts when the CGI gets involved. Speaking of that, the worst part of this animation is the camera control. There's a lot of panning in this short by a guy who does not know how to pan the camera in animation! Look at the very first shot of this. As the camera pans backward, George's nose noticeably gets smaller. It is very noticeable! Excuse me if I don't know this, Mr. Animation Expert, but isn't perspective one of the fundamentals of not just animation, but drawing in general?! No, I suppose it isn't. All you need is a CGI table and a computer to do it for you. Look at how awful this looks! The panning doesn't look natural at all because George's size and shape doesn't move along with it. Instead, it makes it look like the table is growing and shrinking and moving of its own accord. Not helping is the background, or the lack of backgrounds for that matter. And yes, Ren and Stimpy had a very similar style when it comes to backgrounds, but that's exactly why they don't work here. To quote the man himself once again: I influenced the background style by not being able to draw perspective. The background artists developed cool graphic painting styles to make my bad backgrounds look like they were that way on purpose. This is why a lot of these crowdfunders by "auteurs" tend to turn out to be incredibly bad, or at least disappointing. It's because things like video games, and especially animation--they're not made by one-man teams. John Kricfalusi may have created Ren and Stimpy, but he was not the reason that it was good, or at the very least, he was not the only reason. He had a team behind him, and if there's one thing that's really starting to peeve me off, it's the kind of "I'm the only one who made this collaborative project a success" attitude. I mean, if you want to know one of the reasons Ren and Stimpy was so good, look up Bob Camp. He was a developer, he did the story, he was a storyboard artist, a writer, a director, a producer, a supervising director, a creative director, and a voice actor on John Kricfalusi's Ren and Stimpy. If you want to see what a cartoon looks like with only one person working on it, well, it's not even this because even something like this required a team. A one-man team looks like Paddy the Pelican. That's what you get when you try to do this on your own. Not to put myself on a moral high ground or anything, but yes, even though I am the creator of my own series, it will never be where it is today without the help of other people, and there are a lot of them. Growing Around requires talented artists, script readers, a music producer, and we're still looking for more people. But I'm not even talking about that. Even something as simple as Animated Atrocities, it's not just me who made this what it is. Things like this would not be possible without my editors or the people around me just giving me direction towards an interesting show to talk about or giving me insight on a script. Do you think I'' drew my own avatar? No, I didn't; and I didn't draw my last one either. The one that I did draw looks like shit! Auteurs don't stand on the shoulders of giants, as they'd like to claim. They ''are the giants and the bigger they are, the more people that they're held up by. And universally, they'd be useless left on their own. The sound effects in Cans Without Labels bring you right back to the nineties. George Liquor: Well, I guess we're having a face for lunch! (A dramatic sting plays as Slab and Ernie shudder in horror) This is because I heard these exact ones back in the nineties. Like, these are literally the ones that you'll hear in the original Ren and Stimpy and in SpongeBob. ''They're stock sound effects, and you know, that-that alone doesn't bug me too much, after all, this thing only pulled in $130,000, you got to save money somewhat, right? The problem is this, you'll hear this exact sound effect no less than three times in these eleven minutes. I am starting to miss ''Johnny Test's whip-crack, to be totally honest with you. (A caption saying "Okay! You asked for it!" is shown. It then cuts to multiple instances of the whip-crack sound effect in Johnny Test until it reaches 190. A caption is then shown, saying, "190, Fucking ridiculous, I know") The whip-crack lasts, what, a fraction of a second? Meanwhile, these dramatic impacts, say, last four seconds, which is incredibly noticeable, and that's not the only issue that I noticed in the sound departments. 'George Liquor: '''What's wrong with the face? Perfectly good face. You should look that good. Do you know how many starving African babies would kill for a nice face like this? Yeah, so this line was put together from two separate takes: they took the first words from one take, and the rest of them from another take, and they barely tried to disguise it. I noticed this because sometimes, I have to do that, but that's because I'm trying to stay on top of YouTube's algorithms; I need to meet a deadline, and even then, I try to make it sound coherent. ''Cans Without Labels was in production for six years, I think you had time to make another take. Oh, and of course, because this is an Internet cartoon, we need to have some needless profanity. 'Slab: '''Wow! '''Slab and Ernie: '''It's Donald Bastard, TV personality! (''Donald Bastard quacks briefly) Oh, did I mention that John K. doesn't like Disney, because he doesn't like Disney. Actually, funny story, the "CalArts Style", as he coined it, didn't refer to things like bean smiles. No, what it referred to were animators trying to opt Disney styles. So not only are the people who use the CalArts complaints, aping an alleged statutory rapist, they are misusing what the complaint was actually about! This thing does like to shove asses in my face a bit too much, but beyond that, it's surprisingly tame in terms of gross out, especially for a John K. production; the whole thing is about the face that they're supposed to eat, but the face doesn't even really look that gross. I've seen pudding skins that look more disgusting. Hell, it doesn't even look like a face. You want to know a really, really sad thing? When people got tired of waiting for this thing to come out, uh, they put together a bunch of storyboards with their voices. Think along the lines of the Recobbled Cut of The Thief and the Cobbler. That unfinished version was better than this final product. If you want to see what John Kricfalusi can animate, given creative freedom, well, don't watch this, watch The Weird Al Close, But No Cigar video. It's much better than this because he probably had people around him to tell him, "No, this is actually how you're supposed to do that. If you do it that way, it will come out awful." Yes, things were too restrictive in the 80s, but some restrictions are important because we need to create a cohesive product, and Cans Without Labels is not cohesive, I mean, it's-it's cohesive garbage. If this was just a terrible product, though, that would be one thing, but no, what really does peeve me off, why I made this video, is that this took six years, seven years, actually, and $130,000 of other people's money, people who looked up to John Kricfalusi. For full disclosure, I did not back this. I don't like John K's actual work in general, so I wouldn't been interested, even if I had disposable income at the time, but that doesn't matter, crowdfunding has a rock-bottom reputation because people like to blame those who had their money swindled instead of the charlatans that swindled them. I think it's time to put an end to that. Oh, and before I go, Butch, Oaxis better be the best damn network that I've ever seen, Christian or not. I am holding you to that. Remember, Proverbs 12:22: the Lord detests lying lips. But he delights in people who are trustworthy.Category:Transcripts Category:Season 6